"When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect..." So begins Franz Kafka's most famous story "Metamorphosis". Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the twentieth century. During his lifetime, he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being "The Transformation". All three of his novels, "The Trial", "The Castle", and "The Man Who Disappeared" [America], were published after his death and helped to found Kafka's reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century. Kafka's fiction vividly evokes bizarre situations: a commercial traveller is turned into an insect, a banker is arrested by a mysterious court, a fasting artist starves to death in the name of art, a singing mouse becomes the heroine of her nation. Attending both to Kafka's crisis-ridden life and to the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson shows how his work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed 'the death of God'. The result is an up-to-date and accessible portrait of a fascinating author, which shows us ways to read and make sense of his perplexing and absorbing work.
Kafka: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
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Ritchie Robertson is a Professor of German at Oxford University and a Fellow of St John's College. He has published books on Kafka, Heine, and Thomas Mann, as well as The Jewish Question in German Literature (OUP, 1999). He has translated several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German authors into English for the Oxford World Classics and Penguin Classics series
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The bare facts of Franz Kafka's life seem ordinary, even banal. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This little book makes it crystal clear as to why Kafka is generally considered to be the most important, or at least most iconic, writer of the twentieth century. Like Kafka, and like most of us, his "heroes" have to suffer the daily grind of typical white collar jobs, and are thrust into a state of false conscious. Robinson explains how Kafka explicates this false consciousness, and compares his thinking to that of other great writers like Nietzsche, Kirkegaard, Schopenhauer, Weber and Freud. He manages to show how Kafka goes further than these writers, in an intensely modern direction, that fully accepts the Death of God while remaining fully spiritual. The last chapter is especially good as it makes explicit the importance of Kafka's aphorisms. Unfortunately, in a truly Kafkaesque move, Penguin have allowed the collected aphorisms, that Robertson recommends, to go out of print. Fortunately you can get find the key aphorisms in the Blue Octavo Notebooks. Harold Bloom highlights Kafka in the context of Western literature, and discusses the Blue Octavo Notebooks, in The Western Canon.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
As a pupil in the Norwegian school system, my level of competence when it came to Kafka was around zero. However, I had found this particular author interesting, and therefore, I wanted to do an in-depth project on some of his workings - particularly "Der Prozess"/"The Trial". In doing so, this small book proved to be an immense help to me.
Since Kafka is - well, not the easiest author to understand - I found this summing-up of some of the main interpretations very useful. Both concise, to-the-point as well as easy-to-understand, this work of Ritchie Robertson was absolutely vital to me when writing the assignment. I especially liked some of the more thourogh parts concerning bodies and institutions in Kafka's works.
Hilsener fra Norge!
Greetings from Norway!
Since Kafka is - well, not the easiest author to understand - I found this summing-up of some of the main interpretations very useful. Both concise, to-the-point as well as easy-to-understand, this work of Ritchie Robertson was absolutely vital to me when writing the assignment. I especially liked some of the more thourogh parts concerning bodies and institutions in Kafka's works.
Hilsener fra Norge!
Greetings from Norway!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Hodge
Format:Paperback
The strength of this book is that it illuminates the key themes in Kafka's writing and avoids turning his works into crude allegories or 'codes' that are somehow in need of deciphering line-by-line. It is clear, extremely well-written and above all sane.
There seems to be an idea in circulation that Kafka was some kind of unhinged outsider who wrote as a form of personal therapy. This book comprehensively debunks this kind of myth. It shows how Kafka's ideas on authority, the family, marriage and work offer powerful insights into modern life, though conveyed through highly expressive artistic means rather than through tracts or essays. It shows how hard Kafka worked at his art, and how seriously he took his calling.
I have only one quibble, and that is that the chapter on 'institutions' opens by conflating institutions with organizations. Carl Menger (active in Kafka's time) pointed out that organic institutions can evolve without having a definite goal or objective. Modern social theorists and economists debate the role of institutions such as promise-keeping in society and in markets. It seems that Kafka was also much concerned in his work with social norms and how they constrain individual behaviour.
There seems to be an idea in circulation that Kafka was some kind of unhinged outsider who wrote as a form of personal therapy. This book comprehensively debunks this kind of myth. It shows how Kafka's ideas on authority, the family, marriage and work offer powerful insights into modern life, though conveyed through highly expressive artistic means rather than through tracts or essays. It shows how hard Kafka worked at his art, and how seriously he took his calling.
I have only one quibble, and that is that the chapter on 'institutions' opens by conflating institutions with organizations. Carl Menger (active in Kafka's time) pointed out that organic institutions can evolve without having a definite goal or objective. Modern social theorists and economists debate the role of institutions such as promise-keeping in society and in markets. It seems that Kafka was also much concerned in his work with social norms and how they constrain individual behaviour.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pithy - the best first step towards understanding K
Beyond the obvious purpose of this book - offering a concise and thought provoking introductory survey to Kafka's disturbing work - it has the added advantage of encapsulating the... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Christopher H
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good introduction to Franz Kafka's life and work
This is a useful modern introduction to the life and work of Franz Kafka by a respected academic. Ritchie Robertson outlines the biography, sets the author's work in the context of... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Paul Bowes
5.0 out of 5 stars
Concise and highly recommended
Although a short introduction to any subject is understandably limited in scope, this book does a fantastic job of introducing Kafka in a way which is as useful to those familiar... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Zerbina
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book about Kafka
Researching a Kafka project and reading a number of books I picked this up almost accidentally without expecting much (thought it would be a basic beginner's guide). Read more
Published on 24 Aug 2007 by Dr John Markway
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very useful guide
I bought this book in order to gain a quick insight into the works and workings of one of the most enigmatic authors in German literature. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2006 by Mr C Gibson
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